


All The Things You Said

by The_Lake_King



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Epistolary, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25252462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lake_King/pseuds/The_Lake_King
Summary: If you were one of Anthony J. Crowley’s plants, you might have seen something strange the morning after the world failed to end. You might have been confused by how charitable your demonic guardian was suddenly feeling about leaf spots, for one. You might have watched through the door as he sat perfectly straight at his desk, writing in fits and bursts. You would certainly have been perturbed when he sealed the letter and set it delicately on the edge of your pot, saying “You must make sure that only Crowley sees that, my dear. Not that I’m sure it matters anymore.” This is what the letter said.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 85





	All The Things You Said

**Author's Note:**

> I have never written fan fiction before, but this popped into my head one night and I had to spit it out somewhere. This work is un-beta'd so any mistakes are my own. Enjoy. :)

My dearest Crowley,

I hope that this is not the end. I pray that this is not the end. (I can feel you rolling your eyes at the second part. Yes, I still pray.) But you must understand my need to prepare for every scenario. This letter is not here in case I die. I cannot imagine a case where I am destroyed but you are not, although I suppose anything is possible when it comes to you. Look at me, rambling already. No, this is in case we make it. In case I make it with my cowardice intact. There is so much unsaid between us, and this state of affairs simply cannot continue. But I am afraid, Crowley. I am so afraid that if we are returned to each other this last time, I will falter and swallow it all, just like I did last night. It has been so long now, and you always knew what to say so much better than I. I tried to forget your words, in the beginning. But there are times when all the things you’ve said fill my head, and I can no longer try to forget. For all the words of human authors that occupy this dusty old head of mine, I can think of none that encapsulate everything that has passed between us better than yours, my dear. Your delicate suggestions, your murmurs that I could pretend not to hear, even your outbursts have lodged in my psyche at every point in our time together. They define the epochs of my world better than any historian ever could. So I will tell it to you now.

“You’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

Those words have been burned into my mind for six thousand years. I have never believed them. And yet, my books can attest that sometimes I whisper them to myself in the night, when Soho stumbles drunkenly by and I wonder whether it’s too terribly late to call a friend. How can it be that from the moment we met you knew me completely? You are the only one to whom I have ever been obvious. It still boggles the mind that within moments of meeting me you knew exactly what I needed to hear. In hindsight I’ve sometimes wondered if it was sarcasm. But then I remember: “A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing.” It has taken me so long to understand what you saw from the word go: that we are not so different, you and I. That I have more in common with the original tempter than the Messenger of G-d. Perhaps I knew long ago, deep down. It has only taken me these millennia to admit not only that it is so, but that I would hate to have it any other way.

“You can’t kill kids!”

And yet we did. There is nothing to justify, nothing to excuse. Would you believe me if I told you I was terrified? I could not confess then; there was no one to hear my sins. I confess to you now that I was selfish. As we stood there, I was not thinking about Noah, or the children. I was thinking of what it would feel like to fall. Would I survive such a thing? Would I have the strength to live without Her? Once I could never have imagined turning away from the Almighty. But there I was, standing amicably next to a demon who was making an awful lot more sense than anyone else. I confess I doubted G-d. That I wept in the confines of that floating zoo, begging for answers and waiting for my wings to burn. I confess that I didn’t look at that first rainbow. I refused. Even now they bring me pain. I confess I turned my back on humanity anyway. I have never had your confidence in my own morality, and in my doubt I left them to drown. I confess that I despised you in that moment for being right. I confess it has taken me too long to figure out for which of those things I am sorry, and for which I am not.

“Toss you for Edinburgh.”

You never cheated. You’re a demon and you never cheated. At first, I thought it was because I would notice you influencing the coin toss. Now I know that it never occurred to you to be truly dishonest with me, not where it mattered. When I read through mythology and folklore, the trickster characters are the ones that stick out to me. Tumbling through life, inconveniencing those who take themselves too seriously, enjoying a bit of chaos for its own sake…But never truly causing harm, except to themselves now and then. They remind me of someone. Sometimes I think pagans had the right of it more than we give them credit for, with their grey-area heroes and capricious gods. The world has never been binary, has it? Looking back now, I have a sneaking suspicion that She never intended it to be. You have never tricked me into something that I didn’t want, never lied to me about anything important. You once said that to tempt a person was merely an exercise in figuring out what they already desire. Eve wanted knowledge. I wanted our arrangement. More than that, I wanted an excuse to see your face again.

“Little demonic miracle of my own.”

You never told me about the scars on your feet. They shouldn’t have shocked me, but they did when I finally saw them last night. You didn’t even hesitate, did you? And for what? To save me some embarrassment and a lot of paperwork? You never told me that you kept the lectern. It should have shocked me, but it couldn’t. I kept a memento too, you see. Not nearly so grand, but no less important to me. Not the books; they have been re-shelved without fanfare. That stupid bag sits in my wardrobe, under some blankets. Right next to a certain pair of court shoes that I also have trouble looking at. I never told you how I felt, standing in the remains of a church. Even now I hesitate to put it in writing, as if we could be in any more trouble. I never told you what happened, after you drove away into the curfew-dark city. I stood in the street and wept. I was _seen_ , you know. Some might say it was poetic: an angel of the Lord weeping for humanity while the bombs fell. It is also a lie. My tears were for us. It was a terrible thing, in that moment, to know with absolute certainty that I was loved.

“I’ll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go.”

I regretted my answer the moment it left my lips. You were always ahead of your time, always looking back with a snide remark for the world as it caught up to you. I was always out of date, stuck in an idyllic version of reality that never existed. You have never gone too fast; it is I who am not fast enough. It is I who refused to see Heaven change around me, I who let the world pass me by. Is it too late to ask you to forgive my glacial pace, my hesitance at every step? You forgave me then, when it took me a century for my trust to outweigh my fear. And how I was afraid, my dear, when you asked me for the means of your own destruction. The thought of you being gone, no more, unreachable forever, was as unbearable then as it is now. The time you spent asleep was painful enough. It was then that I learned in practice something I had long known in principle. It was a rainy day in early December when I heard that another dear friend of mine had died. I once told him to his face that he was a substitute. He told me much the same. When Oscar died, I could no longer pretend that anyone had a hope in Hell of replacing you, even temporarily. I have never had anyone else to fraternize with, not really. It took me one hundred and five years to give you what you asked of me. It has only taken me fifty-two to follow you anywhere you want to go. At least I’m improving.

“You can stay at my place, if you like.”

Say it again. Let me go back and answer again. ‘Take two.’ (I do hope I’m saying that properly.) Let’s do it again where I say: “Yes dear, I would like that ever so much.” If I could rewrite the narrative of our friendship, there would be so many of my words crossed out. Every “I don’t think my side would like that.” Every “Get thee behind me foul fiend.” Every “I don’t even like you.” All crossed out. To say I have regrets is an understatement. To say I’m sorry could never be enough. All I can do is make you a promise. I promise that if we survive this, I will strive to be as kind to you as you have always been to me. I will try to be as honest, to be as brave, and to be as patient. I promise to never forget whose side I’m on. I promise to come to your rescue should you ever have need, though I doubt you would risk discorporation for nibbles. I will try to be a good enough (or perhaps bad enough) angel to be worthy of you. I promise to spend the next six thousand years making up for all the time I’ve wasted.

All this to say that you have always been my world. You have challenged me, made me laugh, made me better, and saved my sorry hide so many times. I love you, Crowley. I love you, I love you, I love you. In all the ways the Greeks had words for and several that they missed. I think, perhaps, I have loved you since the beginning. It just took me several millennia and all of Will’s funny ones to put a name to it. I hope you know that I didn’t mean what I said at the bandstand. I was so terribly frightened, though that does not excuse what I did. It was foolish of me to think that you were unbreakable, that you would put up with my rejection forever. If you cannot forgive that last trespass, I can hardly fault you. If you need a century to sleep on it, I will wait. But if you would have me, I am, and will always be,

Your Angel


End file.
